To address the OP, the balancing of gender and education may mean that men can no longer ride on the merit of simply being men, and will have to actually deliver results. I also think that the worry of male demise is another form of fighting gender equality and a great way to turn away from social gender issues and make it all about men again.
Yeah there's also the shit parents who don't want their daughters to actually work for a living, as well as the fact that little girls have few positive role models in science and industry.
Oh, and here's a good question to ponder - if Zimbardo is right about his hypothesis, then why did the psychiatric community completely reject the idea of "arousal addiction", refusing to list it in the DSM-V?
cause Zimbardo's a haaaaaaaaack
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
To address the OP, the balancing of gender and education may mean that men can no longer ride on the merit of simply being men, and will have to actually deliver results. I also think that the worry of male demise is another form of fighting gender equality and a great way to turn away from social gender issues and make it all about men again.
I certainly found this article interesting. Though, to be honest, I try to think about oppression and societal tropes as little as possible, because it's an incredibly depressing topic. I know that I exhibit many "man box" patterns and have internalized many of it's tropes, but at the same time, I don't really want to think to hard about it because prolonged self-examination always leaves me with a pile of faults and flaws on the table, a lack of solutions for dealing with them, and a stubborn ingrained male ideal of invincibility and emotional detachment that ultimately leads to me putting the toys away and not dealing with them until the next time the topic comes up and I depress myself all over again.
As to the topic at hand, the "decline" of men, this is not the first time I've come across Hymowitz' book, and just like every other time I try to dig into any of the concepts held within, I can't get past my burning desire to punch her straight in the ovaries (misogynist language chosen intentionally.) Excerpts always seem to carry a tone of both blame and shaming, a critique that men whom don't meet misandrist standards of behavior have something wrong with them while simultaneously praising women for breaking misogynist molds. Perhaps I'm overly defensive at critics against my gender due to aforementioned male emotional insecurity, but when the thesis of your book is "grow up", well, fuck off.
That said, there is a trend of "preadulthood" that seems to carry with it a perception of young males who shun responsibility in favor of hedonism, but take a look around at current pop-culture and tell me we're not training them to emulate that shit. I tap my foot to Party Rock as much as the next guy, but at least I'm cognizant that the core message in a lot of these songs is pretty selfish and inconsiderate.
Drink all Day, Play all Night, Let's get it Poppin'... I'm in Miami Bitch.
To address the OP, the balancing of gender and education may mean that men can no longer ride on the merit of simply being men, and will have to actually deliver results. I also think that the worry of male demise is another form of fighting gender equality and a great way to turn away from social gender issues and make it all about men again.
I certainly found this article interesting. Though, to be honest, I try to think about oppression and societal tropes as little as possible, because it's an incredibly depressing topic. I know that I exhibit many "man box" patterns and have internalized many of it's tropes, but at the same time, I don't really want to think to hard about it because prolonged self-examination always leaves me with a pile of faults and flaws on the table, a lack of solutions for dealing with them, and a stubborn ingrained male ideal of invincibility and emotional detachment that ultimately leads to me putting the toys away and not dealing with them until the next time the topic comes up and I depress myself all over again.
As to the topic at hand, the "decline" of men, this is not the first time I've come across Hymowitz' book, and just like every other time I try to dig into any of the concepts held within, I can't get past my burning desire to punch her straight in the ovaries (misogynist language chosen intentionally.) Excerpts always seem to carry a tone of both blame and shaming, a critique that men whom don't meet misandrist standards of behavior have something wrong with them while simultaneously praising women for breaking misogynist molds. Perhaps I'm overly defensive at critics against my gender due to aforementioned male emotional insecurity, but when the thesis of your book is "grow up", well, fuck off.
That said, there is a trend of "preadulthood" that seems to carry with it a perception of young males who shun responsibility in favor of hedonism, but take a look around at current pop-culture and tell me we're not training them to emulate that shit. I tap my foot to Party Rock as much as the next guy, but at least I'm cognizant that the core message in a lot of these songs is pretty selfish and inconsiderate.
Drink all Day, Play all Night, Let's get it Poppin'... I'm in Miami Bitch.
That's the sort of reaction that Hymowitz's book should elicit. Again, it's a 21st century spin on the old model where men are inherently mercurial and wild, and so need to be "tamed" by means of matrimony. Which is an incredibly offensive way to see things for both genders. But, it reinforces the classic model the right wants to cram us all into, so she gets backed by the usual suspects.
This thread is specifically about younger men though. When you talk about "such and such field is still dominated by men" it makes me wonder whether everyone in that field is extremely young and retires super early, or are you skewing things by considering men who do not fall under the topic...
I cannot speak to graduate programs across all disciplines, but in philosophy it is still definitely male-skewed even among the younger cohorts. I was born in 1986, which I take to put me solidly in the putatively failing generation of men, and my graduate class has 6 men and 2 women. Other classes immediately below and above me have yet worse ratios. Granted this varies by program, and mine is especially bad for its caliber (places like NYU have more balanced classes), but I do not think the tides of change have yet come anywhere near effecting a majority-female incoming graduate population. Since we are starting the cut-off for this generational phenomenon at 1980, we should also expect women to constitute more incoming junior faculty, but this is also not so.
I suspect that some of these statistics are too broad to be useful. Women receive more graduate degrees: does this mean that men are struggling? Not if women are receiving those degrees by virtue of attending, in record numbers, 'female-valenced' programs in low-prestige disciplines which men are not in any case much interested in. Nor does it mean that men are struggling if they still get significantly more mileage out of the graduate degrees they do receive--for instance, by way of accruing significantly more tenure track job offers, or being fast tracked into higher-prestige programs, universities, and general academic roles. For instance, even without considering disciplinary boundaries, within philosophy there is a prestige ladder with male-dominated subdisciplines like epistemology, meta-ethics, and metaphysics sitting at the top and female-dominated subdisciplines like applied ethics, normative ethics, and feminist philosophy at the bottom. This ladder has significant consequences when it comes to who gets the the tenure-track jobs, which is, needless to say, a very big deal (most people do not understand how bad the non-tenure academic jobs are). But none of this will show up if you simply start counting graduate degrees awarded and comparing by gender.
In short, I am highly skeptical that men are outperformed by woman at all academic levels, and that this data is undeniable--I am tempted to deny it based on my narrow knowledge of my narrow slot in my narrow field. Perhaps the case can be made nonetheless, but not, I think, with the sort of low-resolution view provided by the statistics in the OP.
Well, we have the great honor to be part of an academic discipline with a very low female population. My incoming class was 10 students, and I think that it was 3 women and 7 men. So about the numbers that you're looking at. And I'm in a public university in a liberal state.
The thing that fascinates me the most is the question about what exactly it means to be a man. Because it means something. I think that it's interesting to talk about the pressures of society on men (I'll admit that's largely because I am a man, and thus it's easier for me to relate to). I even know that there are some things that worry me in my life because even though I freely admit that I don't measure up to this nebulous common idea of what a man is. And it's not like my parents really ingrained some macho male bullshit in me.
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
I have a problem with "the decline of boys in educational achievement" as an area of discussion because I've never heard anything remotely sensible being said. The research I've seen suggests it's basically just an anomaly of the lower class (and thus possibly also a consequence of the hollowing out of the middle class in the US) - there's a sharp divergence in the lower classes between boys and girls based on socioeconomic status, explainable simplistically as "gangs really only recruit boys".
Move outside that socioeconomic group - i.e. get them further away from poverty, with educated, accomplished parents - and the differences disappear.
But for some reason we're ignoring the "fix childhood poverty" solution of the message in favor of some bullshit about attention spans and clearly boys want to be active or whatever. Which sounds suspiciously to me like it has about as much thought put into it as "boys want to play with trucks", and interestingly sounds godawful to the primary and high school version of myself.
The socioeconomic factor makes sense; children tend to perform to expectations. Consider the messages out media send.
First women are smart and responsible while men are reckless, ignorant and foolish
Second, men can - and should - success at life by being rebellious, tough, and indifferent to education. What does a basketball player or a rapper need to study for? Studying is an active hinderance to such careers.
I came across this post basically by accident and I desperately implore people to only read and consider the excerpts I am cross-posting here. There is quite a bit I don't necessarily agree with in this piece, quite a bit that is irrelevant, and quite a bit I know people will want to argue about, but all three of these trajectories would derail the thread completely. I am providing the link solely for citation purposes. There.
Disclaimer done.
A number of years ago, in my early BBS days, I got into an argument with a (much older) man about whether the U.S. medical establishment was gender-biased. His argument was that not only was U.S. medicine not gender-biased in favor of men, it was gender-biased in favor of women. His support for this was that as many men get prostate cancer as women get breast cancer, and yet breast cancer receives much more funding and research than prostate cancer.
Without being able to verify either of these facts easily (this was before such information was available with a couple of mouse clicks), I responded thusly: the reason breast cancer has the research and funding it has is because women (and a few men, most of whom had lost women to breast cancer) had gotten off their asses and gotten it. They had raised money and lobbied and dragged what was once a vaguely shameful disease into the public eye.
I don't actually remember how the debate ended (knowing this guy, I suspect he blew me off), but the gist of it was this: the idea that men as a group might actually have to do something to get their interests represented was totally and completely foreign to him. The "fact" that they weren't represented already was just proof of bias and oppression.
I wanted to post this because of something @Julius said that bounced around in my skull
I don't know if it makes sense but I totally agree with you. It's kinda crazy because when feminism challenged female gender roles we should've realized instantly that that necessarily affected male gender roles too. But we didn't, they haven't really changed at all which is why in some European countries the law is running ahead of culture.
Like, men suddenly got paternity leave while the culture didn't expect it of them. So they don't take it.
I think men are realizing this more and more though. There is just no movement for them so it looks rather more fragmented.
I read the two bolded parts and then just went "yes, right" and moved on...then a few hours later I did essentially a double take.
What I mean is that I read those parts and thought "Yeah, it is a shame the MRA movement has essentially entrenched it's position as 'anti-feminist thought', it would nice to have an actual cultural movement that strives to loosen gender shackles like early feminist movements..." and then I smacked myself because I had swallowed the narrative of this second quote.
...true gender equality is actually perceived as inequality. A group that is made up of 50% women is perceived as being mostly women. A situation that is perfectly equal between men and women is perceived as being biased in favor of women.
And if you don't believe me, you've never been a married woman who kept her family name. I have had students hold that up as proof of my "sexism." My own brother told me that he could never marry a woman who kept her name because "everyone would know who ruled that relationship." Perfect equality - my husband keeps his name and I keep mine – is held as a statement of superiority on my part.
You guys are going to have to trust me on this one, as my google-fu is weak right now, but there was at least one study that investigated this phenomenon and found a similar trend. If I recall correctly, they had a group comprised of male and female speakers, and it was perceived as unequally biased in in favor of women when the number of speakers was half and half, only being seen as "equal" when the percentage of women speakers dropped around 10%.
The ultimate point I am making here is twofold- I am extremely amenable to the idea that the push for equality for women (vis-a-vis breaking traditional gender role ideas) may have "left men behind"...but keep in mind two things.
1) It took years of struggle, often one sided, by women's rights groups to break free of their gender shackles. Men simply have not done that yet, and by all accounts the majority seem to be intent on disregarding and diminishing the very movement they could learn these techniques from, which is a cruel irony (unsourced allegation, but I would at least point to the last three or four feminism threads on these boards, where most of the people arguing against feminist thought would most likely agree that men need to break out of traditional roles).
and
2) To go back to Julius' post...there is currently a movement advocating for freedom from, or at least the freedom to choose to ignore, traditional gender roles. That movement is the bulk of the current feminist...I guess zeitgeist? (To willingly accept a No True Scotsman fallacy)
Let me put it another way. I am (by all accounts) a straight white male. However, to know me, I realy shirk a large amount of traditional male gender norms. I haven't eaten red meat in 6 years (and just started eating fish again) I am extremely concerned with fashion, I dislike families and don't want to be a father, I have never played a sport in my life, I don't know a thing about cars or power tools, the list goes on and on and I think you get the point. Essentially, if we imagine gender to be a spectrum with "male" on one end and "female" on the other, I fall much closer to the "feminine" side. So it is not surprising I have found solace in a movement that seeks to allow any person to live how they want with regards to gender norms.
I mean, the number of times I have been called "gay" in public, by strangers or light acquaintances because I like tighter, form fitting clothes and carry a sidebag is just staggering...which again explains why I enjoy the current wave of feminist thought.
TL;DR- if you think men are actively harmed by outdated notions of gender roles, you should be paying more attention to modern feminist thought and ignoring the "crazy radicals" people enjoy using to strawman the movement.
I apologize both for this post's lack of citations and rant-like nature. I will endeavor to do better in the future.
When I saw what I was typing though, another thought occurred to me. What if it is about discipline? I wonder how males perform vs females in school environments of varying discipline. And if harsher, or somehow more effective discipline results in better grades amongst males?
In my experience (teaching English to Japanese elementary and Junior High students), I've observed the exact opposite, actually. Classes in which the teacher imposes stricter discipline have a much higher ratio of disinterested, struggling students among males. This affects girls as well, but to a lesser degree. When the students are not enjoying the class (which they won't, if they're getting chewed out by the teacher for every little thing), I've observed that girls are more likely to at least do the bare minimum to complete their assignments, whereas boys are liable to just fold their assignment into a paper airplane and stare at the wall, or chitchat.
I suppose, however, that it's also important to note that how much discipline a teacher imposes on his/her class seems to be dictated more by class size than anything else. The bigger the class, the more the teacher needs to crack the whip to keep order, the more dissatisfied the already-disinterested students become. It's impossible to analyze this sort of thing in a vacuum.
Anyway the plural of anecdote isn't data and all that, but that's been my experience with varying degrees of discipline. It's an issue I've been thinking a lot about since I started teaching.
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I came across this post basically by accident and I desperately implore people to only read and consider the excerpts I am cross-posting here. There is quite a bit I don't necessarily agree with in this piece, quite a bit that is irrelevant, and quite a bit I know people will want to argue about, but all three of these trajectories would derail the thread completely. I am providing the link solely for citation purposes. There.
Disclaimer done.
A number of years ago, in my early BBS days, I got into an argument with a (much older) man about whether the U.S. medical establishment was gender-biased. His argument was that not only was U.S. medicine not gender-biased in favor of men, it was gender-biased in favor of women. His support for this was that as many men get prostate cancer as women get breast cancer, and yet breast cancer receives much more funding and research than prostate cancer.
Without being able to verify either of these facts easily (this was before such information was available with a couple of mouse clicks), I responded thusly: the reason breast cancer has the research and funding it has is because women (and a few men, most of whom had lost women to breast cancer) had gotten off their asses and gotten it. They had raised money and lobbied and dragged what was once a vaguely shameful disease into the public eye.
I don't actually remember how the debate ended (knowing this guy, I suspect he blew me off), but the gist of it was this: the idea that men as a group might actually have to do something to get their interests represented was totally and completely foreign to him. The "fact" that they weren't represented already was just proof of bias and oppression.
I wanted to post this because of something @Julius said that bounced around in my skull
I don't know if it makes sense but I totally agree with you. It's kinda crazy because when feminism challenged female gender roles we should've realized instantly that that necessarily affected male gender roles too. But we didn't, they haven't really changed at all which is why in some European countries the law is running ahead of culture.
Like, men suddenly got paternity leave while the culture didn't expect it of them. So they don't take it.
I think men are realizing this more and more though. There is just no movement for them so it looks rather more fragmented.
I read the two bolded parts and then just went "yes, right" and moved on...then a few hours later I did essentially a double take.
What I mean is that I read those parts and thought "Yeah, it is a shame the MRA movement has essentially entrenched it's position as 'anti-feminist thought', it would nice to have an actual cultural movement that strives to loosen gender shackles like early feminist movements..." and then I smacked myself because I had swallowed the narrative of this second quote.
...true gender equality is actually perceived as inequality. A group that is made up of 50% women is perceived as being mostly women. A situation that is perfectly equal between men and women is perceived as being biased in favor of women.
And if you don't believe me, you've never been a married woman who kept her family name. I have had students hold that up as proof of my "sexism." My own brother told me that he could never marry a woman who kept her name because "everyone would know who ruled that relationship." Perfect equality - my husband keeps his name and I keep mine – is held as a statement of superiority on my part.
You guys are going to have to trust me on this one, as my google-fu is weak right now, but there was at least one study that investigated this phenomenon and found a similar trend. If I recall correctly, they had a group comprised of male and female speakers, and it was perceived as unequally biased in in favor of women when the number of speakers was half and half, only being seen as "equal" when the percentage of women speakers dropped around 10%.
The ultimate point I am making here is twofold- I am extremely amenable to the idea that the push for equality for women (vis-a-vis breaking traditional gender role ideas) may have "left men behind"...but keep in mind two things.
1) It took years of struggle, often one sided, by women's rights groups to break free of their gender shackles. Men simply have not done that yet, and by all accounts the majority seem to be intent on disregarding and diminishing the very movement they could learn these techniques from, which is a cruel irony (unsourced allegation, but I would at least point to the last three or four feminism threads on these boards, where most of the people arguing against feminist thought would most likely agree that men need to break out of traditional roles).
and
2) To go back to Julius' post...there is currently a movement advocating for freedom from, or at least the freedom to choose to ignore, traditional gender roles. That movement is the bulk of the current feminist...I guess zeitgeist? (To willingly accept a No True Scotsman fallacy)
Let me put it another way. I am (by all accounts) a straight white male. However, to know me, I realy shirk a large amount of traditional male gender norms. I haven't eaten red meat in 6 years (and just started eating fish again) I am extremely concerned with fashion, I dislike families and don't want to be a father, I have never played a sport in my life, I don't know a thing about cars or power tools, the list goes on and on and I think you get the point. Essentially, if we imagine gender to be a spectrum with "male" on one end and "female" on the other, I fall much closer to the "feminine" side. So it is not surprising I have found solace in a movement that seeks to allow any person to live how they want with regards to gender norms.
I mean, the number of times I have been called "gay" in public, by strangers or light acquaintances because I like tighter, form fitting clothes and carry a sidebag is just staggering...which again explains why I enjoy the current wave of feminist thought.
TL;DR- if you think men are actively harmed by outdated notions of gender roles, you should be paying more attention to modern feminist thought and ignoring the "crazy radicals" people enjoy using to strawman the movement.
I apologize both for this post's lack of citations and rant-like nature. I will endeavor to do better in the future.
My concern is that we shouldn't start looking down on traditional roles as they start relaxing. My wife gets shit from other women all the time about being a stay at home wife, and I think that is bull shit. I am all for broadening the range of accepted behaviors, but when we have kids, we fully intend on having a pink or blue nursery, giving them gendered toys and clothes, and enrolling them in gendered activities. If we have a daughter she will take dance classes. She would also play team Sports though and have a microscope and toy drill if she wants them, and I guess that is the triumph of feminism.
What I would not do is buy my son a doll or pink aisle toys (mostly because I would not want him getting teased) but if the result of all this is to relax that stigma, I think that is good, as long as we don't also start demonizing the gendered boy toys and activities, but I fear that is exactly what will happen.
The taking names issue is a good illustration. I feel like women have fought so hard for the ability to keep their family name in marriage that we have almost made it shameful for a man to say he would not marry someone who wanted to do that. Expanding options means making it ok for women to keep their name, but also making it ok for men to say in public that they would not marry a girl who was keeping her name, IMO.
Edit: as an example of how much these norms are being relaxed, the conservative candidate for president has a magnificent dancing horse and as I can tell, no one is calling him a fag or unmasculine because of it.
It is shameful to say you would reject a woman who didn't want to change her name. You're kind of hopping on the "slippery slope" argument here with no real justification for doing so.
Personally if I end up getting married I won't force my name on her (mostly because it's a crap name), I'd be most in favour of both of us changing our names and starting a new line.
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
It is shameful to say you would reject a woman who didn't want to change her name. You're kind of hopping on the "slippery slope" argument here with no real justification for doing so.
Personally if I end up getting married I won't force my name on her (mostly because it's a crap name), I'd be most in favour of both of us changing our names and starting a new line.
Why is that shameful? Taking the man's name is just the solution to a coordination problem, and when women refuse to do so, it just makes life a little more confusing for everyone (especially children), and accomplishes what exactly? I would not date a feminist, because we would disagree on too many things. Is that wrong to say?
0
Options
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
It is shameful to say you would reject a woman who didn't want to change her name. You're kind of hopping on the "slippery slope" argument here with no real justification for doing so.
Personally if I end up getting married I won't force my name on her (mostly because it's a crap name), I'd be most in favour of both of us changing our names and starting a new line.
Why is that shameful? Taking the man's name is just the solution to a coordination problem, and when women refuse to do so, it just makes life a little more confusing for everyone (especially children), and accomplishes what exactly? I would not date a feminist, because we would disagree on too many things. Is that wrong to say?
Yes, because your definition of feminist is outdated and generalized to the point of being inaccurate. Does the old farmer who likes a nice cup of tea and a mug of beer while watching baseball and reading the paper wish my partner would take my name when we get married in a couple years? Sure.
But I'm certainly not going to break up with her over it.
(Though you are already married so hopefully this isn't a decision you'll ever be faced with again!)
I have a problem with "the decline of boys in educational achievement" as an area of discussion because I've never heard anything remotely sensible being said. The research I've seen suggests it's basically just an anomaly of the lower class (and thus possibly also a consequence of the hollowing out of the middle class in the US) - there's a sharp divergence in the lower classes between boys and girls based on socioeconomic status, explainable simplistically as "gangs really only recruit boys".
Move outside that socioeconomic group - i.e. get them further away from poverty, with educated, accomplished parents - and the differences disappear.
But for some reason we're ignoring the "fix childhood poverty" solution of the message in favor of some bullshit about attention spans and clearly boys want to be active or whatever. Which sounds suspiciously to me like it has about as much thought put into it as "boys want to play with trucks", and interestingly sounds godawful to the primary and high school version of myself.
Ha, you beat me to it.
This was exactly the question I was going to ask: What's the difference between income groups here in these stats?
Cause I could easily see men doing worse and dropping out more if you throw all income groups into a big pile. Because low income men, afaik, are far more likely to drop out then just about anyone else.
A large part of this I would attribute to gender roles as well, not just your other points about socioeconomic status though. The socio part of that often involves a culture with very heavy imposed very traditional male roles that aren't always compatible with education.
Though I agree with the bunch of other posts about shitty gender roles for men and the stuff about school being designed for a specific personality type that is more common in girls then boys because of gender roles.
As a personal note, I really noticed the gender role thing over the last few years where I've been, at several points, a househusband. GF works, I stay at home and cook and clean. I find it amazing the number of people this makes uncomfortable.
shryke on
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
It is shameful to say you would reject a woman who didn't want to change her name. You're kind of hopping on the "slippery slope" argument here with no real justification for doing so.
Personally if I end up getting married I won't force my name on her (mostly because it's a crap name), I'd be most in favour of both of us changing our names and starting a new line.
Why is that shameful? Taking the man's name is just the solution to a coordination problem, and when women refuse to do so, it just makes life a little more confusing for everyone (especially children), and accomplishes what exactly? I would not date a feminist, because we would disagree on too many things. Is that wrong to say?
Yes, because your definition of feminist is outdated and generalized to the point of being inaccurate. Does the old farmer who likes a nice cup of tea and a mug of beer while watching baseball and reading the paper wish my partner would take my name when we get married in a couple years? Sure.
But I'm certainly not going to break up with her over it.
(Though you are already married so hopefully this isn't a decision you'll ever be faced with again!)
Not saying you should! Just saying that it should be ok to express a preference for traditional gender roles just like it is now to prefer nontraditional roles. Why is it ok for a woman to insist on keeping her name, but not for a man to insist that she take his?
And don't worry, I don't think I'll be facing this problem anytime soon. Incidentally, my wife has a much bigger problem with feminism than I do. She actually gets mad when women don't change names and things like that. We are both really big on traditional gender roles (although also really supportive of gays, which I know might seem confusing).
0
Options
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Nothing confusing about that in my book.
I do think your definition of feminism might be slightly off, but I daresay this is the wrong thread to open that bag of kittens.
It is shameful to say you would reject a woman who didn't want to change her name. You're kind of hopping on the "slippery slope" argument here with no real justification for doing so.
Personally if I end up getting married I won't force my name on her (mostly because it's a crap name), I'd be most in favour of both of us changing our names and starting a new line.
Why is that shameful? Taking the man's name is just the solution to a coordination problem, and when women refuse to do so, it just makes life a little more confusing for everyone (especially children), and accomplishes what exactly? I would not date a feminist, because we would disagree on too many things. Is that wrong to say?
Yes, because your definition of feminist is outdated and generalized to the point of being inaccurate. Does the old farmer who likes a nice cup of tea and a mug of beer while watching baseball and reading the paper wish my partner would take my name when we get married in a couple years? Sure.
But I'm certainly not going to break up with her over it.
(Though you are already married so hopefully this isn't a decision you'll ever be faced with again!)
Not saying you should! Just saying that it should be ok to express a preference for traditional gender roles just like it is now to prefer nontraditional roles. Why is it ok for a woman to insist on keeping her name, but not for a man to insist that she take his?
And don't worry, I don't think I'll be facing this problem anytime soon. Incidentally, my wife has a much bigger problem with feminism than I do. She actually gets mad when women don't change names and things like that. We are both really big on traditional gender roles (although also really supportive of gays, which I know might seem confusing).
Why is it ok for someone to choose to not do something to her name, but it is not ok for someone else to coerce them to do something to her name?
Are you fucking high?
Edit: do you not see the false equivolences between doing something to yourself, and having someone do something to theirself, or between someone choosing something for themself or someone else asking them to do the same?
I have a problem with "the decline of boys in educational achievement" as an area of discussion because I've never heard anything remotely sensible being said. The research I've seen suggests it's basically just an anomaly of the lower class (and thus possibly also a consequence of the hollowing out of the middle class in the US) - there's a sharp divergence in the lower classes between boys and girls based on socioeconomic status, explainable simplistically as "gangs really only recruit boys".
Move outside that socioeconomic group - i.e. get them further away from poverty, with educated, accomplished parents - and the differences disappear.
But for some reason we're ignoring the "fix childhood poverty" solution of the message in favor of some bullshit about attention spans and clearly boys want to be active or whatever. Which sounds suspiciously to me like it has about as much thought put into it as "boys want to play with trucks", and interestingly sounds godawful to the primary and high school version of myself.
@electricitylikesme, do you have a source that separates the genders by socioeconomic groups? I would be interested in seeing the data.
I mean, if this disparity exists only in the lower brackets, the disparity is still there. I then wonder why would boys suffer more than girls from poverty? Perhaps because people in poverty tend to be raised by single mothers? Are those numbers really that high? I don't know, just musing.
Lilnoobs on
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
It is shameful to say you would reject a woman who didn't want to change her name. You're kind of hopping on the "slippery slope" argument here with no real justification for doing so.
Personally if I end up getting married I won't force my name on her (mostly because it's a crap name), I'd be most in favour of both of us changing our names and starting a new line.
Why is that shameful? Taking the man's name is just the solution to a coordination problem, and when women refuse to do so, it just makes life a little more confusing for everyone (especially children), and accomplishes what exactly? I would not date a feminist, because we would disagree on too many things. Is that wrong to say?
Yes, because your definition of feminist is outdated and generalized to the point of being inaccurate. Does the old farmer who likes a nice cup of tea and a mug of beer while watching baseball and reading the paper wish my partner would take my name when we get married in a couple years? Sure.
But I'm certainly not going to break up with her over it.
(Though you are already married so hopefully this isn't a decision you'll ever be faced with again!)
Not saying you should! Just saying that it should be ok to express a preference for traditional gender roles just like it is now to prefer nontraditional roles. Why is it ok for a woman to insist on keeping her name, but not for a man to insist that she take his?
And don't worry, I don't think I'll be facing this problem anytime soon. Incidentally, my wife has a much bigger problem with feminism than I do. She actually gets mad when women don't change names and things like that. We are both really big on traditional gender roles (although also really supportive of gays, which I know might seem confusing).
Why is it ok for someone to choose to not do something to her name, but it is not ok for someone else to coerce them to do something to her name?
Are you fucking high?
Edit: do you not see the false equivolences between doing something to yourself, and having someone do something to theirself, or between someone choosing something for themself or someone else asking them to do the same?
The choice is between preferring new, evolving norms and values vs preferring traditional values. In one case, the woman is choosing for the family to not have a single name to identify it, in the other, the man is choosing for the family to have a single name which identifies it as a family, as has been the norm in our society for time immemorial (do we know when this started?). Do you really want to say this is is purely a women's issue, and not an issue about the family as a unit?
This is interesting. I'm not seeing this at all where I live. It's still a mostly male dominated world here. Education wise, drop outs, etc. Granted there are a greater number of bullies that are guys, that struggled and drop out, but I'm guessing this has always been the case, and been historic. There's also been a focus on pushing vocational education and trade schools on guys. Not sure why.
That said, in the rural area I live, girls are still at a far larger disadvantage. This seems to be the complete opposite of any of the large metropolitan areas where they excel. I'm wonder if this has anything to do with it. And I wonder why that is, if it's the case.
Edit: in the professional world, outside of NYS I'm noticing larger amounts of women in the workforce, but where I live, I almost exclusively deal with men. I'm also wondering how pay discrepencies are working into this. Are women still making less than men in their respective fields? Are employers exploiting this to pay less for labor? I'm betting almost exclusively this has more to do with it then watching porn and playing video games (SURPRISE THIS IS POPULAR FOR GIRLS NOW TOO). Plus we need to look at the type of video games people are playing. Most girls I know play video games. The games they play? Sims, Farmville, bejeweled and games like this. Guys? Call of Duty, Diablo, and other violent styled games (both can play either but they seem to deviate this way). Strategy seems to be a bigger part of the latter set of games while busy busy seems to be part of the first set of games. Maybe there is a great number of secretarial work than skilled/focused strategy work?
I am still banking on the "I want to pay less for labor, so fuck you."
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Whats the definition of "failure" in this? If the "child-man's" goal is to go to work, make enough to have fun, and play games - then they didn't fail.
I'm also wondering how pay discrepencies are working into this. Are women still making less than men in their respective fields? Are employers exploiting this to pay less for labor?
The pay discrepancy factoid myth really needs to go away. The Patriarchy hasn't issued marching orders to keep women's salaries 23% lower than men's. If they had, if that's something everyone had agreed on, you could bet your life savings that you would very rarely see a man working at a Fortune 500 company.
The whole thing is just momentum of conventional wisdom hogwash from before Human Resources replaced the Personnel Department and magic math.
Cases where discrimination against women, or anyone else for that matter, should be addressed seriously, but to believe in 2012 that employers in general lower the payscale for women solely because of their gender is beyond silly.
It is shameful to say you would reject a woman who didn't want to change her name. You're kind of hopping on the "slippery slope" argument here with no real justification for doing so.
Personally if I end up getting married I won't force my name on her (mostly because it's a crap name), I'd be most in favour of both of us changing our names and starting a new line.
Why is that shameful? Taking the man's name is just the solution to a coordination problem, and when women refuse to do so, it just makes life a little more confusing for everyone (especially children), and accomplishes what exactly? I would not date a feminist, because we would disagree on too many things. Is that wrong to say?
Yes, because your definition of feminist is outdated and generalized to the point of being inaccurate. Does the old farmer who likes a nice cup of tea and a mug of beer while watching baseball and reading the paper wish my partner would take my name when we get married in a couple years? Sure.
But I'm certainly not going to break up with her over it.
(Though you are already married so hopefully this isn't a decision you'll ever be faced with again!)
Not saying you should! Just saying that it should be ok to express a preference for traditional gender roles just like it is now to prefer nontraditional roles. Why is it ok for a woman to insist on keeping her name, but not for a man to insist that she take his?
And don't worry, I don't think I'll be facing this problem anytime soon. Incidentally, my wife has a much bigger problem with feminism than I do. She actually gets mad when women don't change names and things like that. We are both really big on traditional gender roles (although also really supportive of gays, which I know might seem confusing).
Why is it ok for someone to choose to not do something to her name, but it is not ok for someone else to coerce them to do something to her name?
Are you fucking high?
Edit: do you not see the false equivolences between doing something to yourself, and having someone do something to theirself, or between someone choosing something for themself or someone else asking them to do the same?
The choice is between preferring new, evolving norms and values vs preferring traditional values. In one case, the woman is choosing for the family to not have a single name to identify it, in the other, the man is choosing for the family to have a single name which identifies it as a family, as has been the norm in our society for time immemorial (do we know when this started?). Do you really want to say this is is purely a women's issue, and not an issue about the family as a unit?
As there are options for shared names outside the norm of a woman accepting her husband's name, I consider your argument a false dichotomy. Relevance as a family unit issue does not detract from and is not inconsistent with relevance as a woman's / feminist issue. I will probably never say any issue worth discussing is purely a [whatever] issue.
Grr... thread is supposed to be about education. We are far afield from that topic. We need a straight up feminism thread for this.
I'm also wondering how pay discrepencies are working into this. Are women still making less than men in their respective fields? Are employers exploiting this to pay less for labor?
The pay discrepancy factoid myth really needs to go away. The Patriarchy hasn't issued marching orders to keep women's salaries 23% lower than men's. If they had, if that's something everyone had agreed on, you could bet your life savings that you would very rarely see a man working at a Fortune 500 company.
The whole thing is just momentum of conventional wisdom hogwash from before Human Resources replaced the Personnel Department and magic math.
Cases where discrimination against women, or anyone else for that matter, should be addressed seriously, but to believe in 2012 that employers in general lower the payscale for women solely because of their gender is beyond silly.
Oh? I was under the assumption that women coworkers in the same field are paid less because of the higher level of benefits they receive (time off for pregnancy for instance). Plus they often take less financially rewarding field because of the responsibilities may interfere with that. For instance, in the medical field, more women tend to focus on the lower paying MD specialties like pediatrics, or family practice, because they're often given more leeway than a neuro or vascular surgeon (especially when there's only 2-3 surgeons in a practice).
Edit:
Feel free to give me some sources on that because I'm all for changing my views. I think it's still a coupling of "I can pay you 10% less" and possibly, men are still present in fortune500 companies because, well, it's historic to have men on the team part of the company "feel" or something. The same reason black people were told they weren't the right "fit" for the loans back in the day.
I still think this happens. My experience with higher ups at these companies has not been very favorable... I've seen jokes directed at the female workers... it's really fucking awkward.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
It is shameful to say you would reject a woman who didn't want to change her name. You're kind of hopping on the "slippery slope" argument here with no real justification for doing so.
Personally if I end up getting married I won't force my name on her (mostly because it's a crap name), I'd be most in favour of both of us changing our names and starting a new line.
Why is that shameful? Taking the man's name is just the solution to a coordination problem, and when women refuse to do so, it just makes life a little more confusing for everyone (especially children), and accomplishes what exactly? I would not date a feminist, because we would disagree on too many things. Is that wrong to say?
Yes, because your definition of feminist is outdated and generalized to the point of being inaccurate. Does the old farmer who likes a nice cup of tea and a mug of beer while watching baseball and reading the paper wish my partner would take my name when we get married in a couple years? Sure.
But I'm certainly not going to break up with her over it.
(Though you are already married so hopefully this isn't a decision you'll ever be faced with again!)
Not saying you should! Just saying that it should be ok to express a preference for traditional gender roles just like it is now to prefer nontraditional roles. Why is it ok for a woman to insist on keeping her name, but not for a man to insist that she take his?
And don't worry, I don't think I'll be facing this problem anytime soon. Incidentally, my wife has a much bigger problem with feminism than I do. She actually gets mad when women don't change names and things like that. We are both really big on traditional gender roles (although also really supportive of gays, which I know might seem confusing).
Why is it ok for someone to choose to not do something to her name, but it is not ok for someone else to coerce them to do something to her name?
Are you fucking high?
Edit: do you not see the false equivolences between doing something to yourself, and having someone do something to theirself, or between someone choosing something for themself or someone else asking them to do the same?
The choice is between preferring new, evolving norms and values vs preferring traditional values. In one case, the woman is choosing for the family to not have a single name to identify it, in the other, the man is choosing for the family to have a single name which identifies it as a family, as has been the norm in our society for time immemorial (do we know when this started?). Do you really want to say this is is purely a women's issue, and not an issue about the family as a unit?
As there are options for shared names outside the norm of a woman accepting her husband's name, I consider your argument a false dichotomy. Relevance as a family unit issue does not detract from and is not inconsistent with relevance as a woman's / feminist issue. I will probably never say any issue worth discussing is purely a [whatever] issue.
Grr... thread is supposed to be about education. We are far afield from that topic. We need a straight up feminism thread for this.
AMFE started a thread on defining feminism, but this may be outside the topic.
The point I was trying to make before is just that I hope relaxing traditional male gender roles does not turn out the way it has for women, with all the complaints and put downs leveled at people who actually like traditional gender roles. Making it socially acceptable for boys to play with a kitchen set = good. Looking down on toys that enforce traditional gender roles like toy guns and action figures the way feminists look at the pink aisle = bad.
Another thing I was thinking about in the shower this morning is that up here in Canada, the grading system is a lot more loosey-goosey.
You basically can't fail anymore. Couple that with male competitive nature (speaking in generalities, I admit), and that eliminates the drive to "beat others", in the competitive sense. If there's no sense of competition, and everyone just gets a "participant" ribbon, regardless of how they do, then why bother?
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Its funny that you're talking about toys. My daughter gets depressed whenever we go to the toy store because "they don't make any good toys for girls". Which, by and large, is true. Though, in all fairness, most of the toys for boys are also shit, and when not shit, it's usually not something she's interested in.
The ultimate point I am making here is twofold- I am extremely amenable to the idea that the push for equality for women (vis-a-vis breaking traditional gender role ideas) may have "left men behind"...but keep in mind two things.
1) It took years of struggle, often one sided, by women's rights groups to break free of their gender shackles. Men simply have not done that yet, and by all accounts the majority seem to be intent on disregarding and diminishing the very movement they could learn these techniques from, which is a cruel irony (unsourced allegation, but I would at least point to the last three or four feminism threads on these boards, where most of the people arguing against feminist thought would most likely agree that men need to break out of traditional roles).
and
2) To go back to Julius' post...there is currently a movement advocating for freedom from, or at least the freedom to choose to ignore, traditional gender roles. That movement is the bulk of the current feminist...I guess zeitgeist? (To willingly accept a No True Scotsman fallacy)
Let me put it another way. I am (by all accounts) a straight white male. However, to know me, I realy shirk a large amount of traditional male gender norms. I haven't eaten red meat in 6 years (and just started eating fish again) I am extremely concerned with fashion, I dislike families and don't want to be a father, I have never played a sport in my life, I don't know a thing about cars or power tools, the list goes on and on and I think you get the point. Essentially, if we imagine gender to be a spectrum with "male" on one end and "female" on the other, I fall much closer to the "feminine" side. So it is not surprising I have found solace in a movement that seeks to allow any person to live how they want with regards to gender norms.
I mean, the number of times I have been called "gay" in public, by strangers or light acquaintances because I like tighter, form fitting clothes and carry a sidebag is just staggering...which again explains why I enjoy the current wave of feminist thought.
TL;DR- if you think men are actively harmed by outdated notions of gender roles, you should be paying more attention to modern feminist thought and ignoring the "crazy radicals" people enjoy using to strawman the movement.
I apologize both for this post's lack of citations and rant-like nature. I will endeavor to do better in the future.
Oh yeah the feminist movement is what we should look to. I meant that most men aren't in a movement because there is still this perceived idea that feminism is for girls. Which it was when the fight was about legal and moral equality, but now it's about role equality and even more about how the idea of roles itself doesn't really work.
The whole point is that we don't need two movements, there need be only one movement for equality and it's sorta sad that we have in our culture basically told men and boys that feminism isn't for them.
Complex complicated issue for sure. I definitely agree with others here that the significant focus on leveling the playing field for women in recent decades has had a detrimental effect on men. Not necessarily unfairly so, depending on how you look at it. In other words, I think the focus on equality for women has been for the most part an unquestionably good thing and needs to continue. The downside was that there was always a presumption that men were already in the advantage and that there didn't need to be much focus on them, except blaming them for things now and then. The presumption was that if men suffered in the sexual revolution, it was only because they lost their unfair advantage. But we need to focus on men and boys in a positive manner. They also need to re-learn how to succeed in a more gender neutral society.
I think the theory goes like this: men have enjoyed an unfair advantage due to bilogically and culturally enforced talents assoicated with aggressiveness, bullying, a certain kind of non-goal-oriented competitiveness, warrior/pack mentality, dominance/submission interactions with women, etc. As the occurrence and benefits of such behaviors are neutralized, we shouldn't be surprised that it doesn't just equal the playing field, but may in fact leave men to just play FPSes and watch porn all day.
Although I don't have the data, I'd wager a heckuva lot that you can see this trend even more significantly (and over a longer history) when you look at certain subcultures. I was fascinated by the description of Hmong culture in the Clint Eastwood movie. Hmong women go to college, Hmong men go to prison.
The male gender is more or less the mutant gender. We're the ones with the Y chromosome. Males have always had the higher incidence of birth defects. We get sick easier and die earlier. We feel physical pain more and emotional pain less. We're prone to analysis over wisdom. We're stronger and more aggressive. All that jazz. The more cerebral society becomes, the more the Y chromosome becomes a handicap, not an advantage.
I also agree that in the past 10 or 20 years there has evolved a significant "preadulthood." I've seen it all around. It isn't just men, it's men and women. People seem to continue their high school / college adolescent behavior until they're solidly in their 30s. I'm not sure what direct effect that has on gender issues though. I think it just means that women are spending more time establishing a professional resume before they take their 10-year vacation.
I also agree that in the past 10 or 20 years there has evolved a significant "preadulthood." I've seen it all around. It isn't just men, it's men and women. People seem to continue their high school / college adolescent behavior until they're solidly in their 30s. I'm not sure what direct effect that has on gender issues though. I think it just means that women are spending more time establishing a professional resume before they take their 10-year vacation.
I have an inkling that both men and women are increasingly rejecting the "get good grades, go to college, enjoy secure middle class existence" propoganda as the shell-game it's increasingly becoming. They're just reacting differently. The guys are opting out right at the start of the "get good grades" stage, because it has never been cool to be studious, and now there's not even a (perceived) solid economic argument for their being so. Who wants to bust a hump getting 'A's so that you can be the best educated barista or fry-chef or - more likely - welfare receipient? Might as well go for the one-in-a-million chance of being the next Michael Jordan or Eminem (or whoever's cool these days, damb if I know), since if you fail, you'll just be another poorly educated fry chef anyway.
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Posts
You might find this article interesting
http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/156194/what_about_the_men_why_our_gender_system_sucks_for_men,_too?page=entire
cause Zimbardo's a haaaaaaaaack
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I certainly found this article interesting. Though, to be honest, I try to think about oppression and societal tropes as little as possible, because it's an incredibly depressing topic. I know that I exhibit many "man box" patterns and have internalized many of it's tropes, but at the same time, I don't really want to think to hard about it because prolonged self-examination always leaves me with a pile of faults and flaws on the table, a lack of solutions for dealing with them, and a stubborn ingrained male ideal of invincibility and emotional detachment that ultimately leads to me putting the toys away and not dealing with them until the next time the topic comes up and I depress myself all over again.
As to the topic at hand, the "decline" of men, this is not the first time I've come across Hymowitz' book, and just like every other time I try to dig into any of the concepts held within, I can't get past my burning desire to punch her straight in the ovaries (misogynist language chosen intentionally.) Excerpts always seem to carry a tone of both blame and shaming, a critique that men whom don't meet misandrist standards of behavior have something wrong with them while simultaneously praising women for breaking misogynist molds. Perhaps I'm overly defensive at critics against my gender due to aforementioned male emotional insecurity, but when the thesis of your book is "grow up", well, fuck off.
That said, there is a trend of "preadulthood" that seems to carry with it a perception of young males who shun responsibility in favor of hedonism, but take a look around at current pop-culture and tell me we're not training them to emulate that shit. I tap my foot to Party Rock as much as the next guy, but at least I'm cognizant that the core message in a lot of these songs is pretty selfish and inconsiderate.
Drink all Day, Play all Night, Let's get it Poppin'... I'm in Miami Bitch.
That's the sort of reaction that Hymowitz's book should elicit. Again, it's a 21st century spin on the old model where men are inherently mercurial and wild, and so need to be "tamed" by means of matrimony. Which is an incredibly offensive way to see things for both genders. But, it reinforces the classic model the right wants to cram us all into, so she gets backed by the usual suspects.
Well, we have the great honor to be part of an academic discipline with a very low female population. My incoming class was 10 students, and I think that it was 3 women and 7 men. So about the numbers that you're looking at. And I'm in a public university in a liberal state.
The thing that fascinates me the most is the question about what exactly it means to be a man. Because it means something. I think that it's interesting to talk about the pressures of society on men (I'll admit that's largely because I am a man, and thus it's easier for me to relate to). I even know that there are some things that worry me in my life because even though I freely admit that I don't measure up to this nebulous common idea of what a man is. And it's not like my parents really ingrained some macho male bullshit in me.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Move outside that socioeconomic group - i.e. get them further away from poverty, with educated, accomplished parents - and the differences disappear.
But for some reason we're ignoring the "fix childhood poverty" solution of the message in favor of some bullshit about attention spans and clearly boys want to be active or whatever. Which sounds suspiciously to me like it has about as much thought put into it as "boys want to play with trucks", and interestingly sounds godawful to the primary and high school version of myself.
First women are smart and responsible while men are reckless, ignorant and foolish
Second, men can - and should - success at life by being rebellious, tough, and indifferent to education. What does a basketball player or a rapper need to study for? Studying is an active hinderance to such careers.
Disclaimer done.
I wanted to post this because of something @Julius said that bounced around in my skull
I read the two bolded parts and then just went "yes, right" and moved on...then a few hours later I did essentially a double take.
What I mean is that I read those parts and thought "Yeah, it is a shame the MRA movement has essentially entrenched it's position as 'anti-feminist thought', it would nice to have an actual cultural movement that strives to loosen gender shackles like early feminist movements..." and then I smacked myself because I had swallowed the narrative of this second quote.
You guys are going to have to trust me on this one, as my google-fu is weak right now, but there was at least one study that investigated this phenomenon and found a similar trend. If I recall correctly, they had a group comprised of male and female speakers, and it was perceived as unequally biased in in favor of women when the number of speakers was half and half, only being seen as "equal" when the percentage of women speakers dropped around 10%.
The ultimate point I am making here is twofold- I am extremely amenable to the idea that the push for equality for women (vis-a-vis breaking traditional gender role ideas) may have "left men behind"...but keep in mind two things.
1) It took years of struggle, often one sided, by women's rights groups to break free of their gender shackles. Men simply have not done that yet, and by all accounts the majority seem to be intent on disregarding and diminishing the very movement they could learn these techniques from, which is a cruel irony (unsourced allegation, but I would at least point to the last three or four feminism threads on these boards, where most of the people arguing against feminist thought would most likely agree that men need to break out of traditional roles).
and
2) To go back to Julius' post...there is currently a movement advocating for freedom from, or at least the freedom to choose to ignore, traditional gender roles. That movement is the bulk of the current feminist...I guess zeitgeist? (To willingly accept a No True Scotsman fallacy)
Let me put it another way. I am (by all accounts) a straight white male. However, to know me, I realy shirk a large amount of traditional male gender norms. I haven't eaten red meat in 6 years (and just started eating fish again) I am extremely concerned with fashion, I dislike families and don't want to be a father, I have never played a sport in my life, I don't know a thing about cars or power tools, the list goes on and on and I think you get the point. Essentially, if we imagine gender to be a spectrum with "male" on one end and "female" on the other, I fall much closer to the "feminine" side. So it is not surprising I have found solace in a movement that seeks to allow any person to live how they want with regards to gender norms.
I mean, the number of times I have been called "gay" in public, by strangers or light acquaintances because I like tighter, form fitting clothes and carry a sidebag is just staggering...which again explains why I enjoy the current wave of feminist thought.
TL;DR- if you think men are actively harmed by outdated notions of gender roles, you should be paying more attention to modern feminist thought and ignoring the "crazy radicals" people enjoy using to strawman the movement.
I apologize both for this post's lack of citations and rant-like nature. I will endeavor to do better in the future.
In my experience (teaching English to Japanese elementary and Junior High students), I've observed the exact opposite, actually. Classes in which the teacher imposes stricter discipline have a much higher ratio of disinterested, struggling students among males. This affects girls as well, but to a lesser degree. When the students are not enjoying the class (which they won't, if they're getting chewed out by the teacher for every little thing), I've observed that girls are more likely to at least do the bare minimum to complete their assignments, whereas boys are liable to just fold their assignment into a paper airplane and stare at the wall, or chitchat.
I suppose, however, that it's also important to note that how much discipline a teacher imposes on his/her class seems to be dictated more by class size than anything else. The bigger the class, the more the teacher needs to crack the whip to keep order, the more dissatisfied the already-disinterested students become. It's impossible to analyze this sort of thing in a vacuum.
Anyway the plural of anecdote isn't data and all that, but that's been my experience with varying degrees of discipline. It's an issue I've been thinking a lot about since I started teaching.
My concern is that we shouldn't start looking down on traditional roles as they start relaxing. My wife gets shit from other women all the time about being a stay at home wife, and I think that is bull shit. I am all for broadening the range of accepted behaviors, but when we have kids, we fully intend on having a pink or blue nursery, giving them gendered toys and clothes, and enrolling them in gendered activities. If we have a daughter she will take dance classes. She would also play team Sports though and have a microscope and toy drill if she wants them, and I guess that is the triumph of feminism.
What I would not do is buy my son a doll or pink aisle toys (mostly because I would not want him getting teased) but if the result of all this is to relax that stigma, I think that is good, as long as we don't also start demonizing the gendered boy toys and activities, but I fear that is exactly what will happen.
The taking names issue is a good illustration. I feel like women have fought so hard for the ability to keep their family name in marriage that we have almost made it shameful for a man to say he would not marry someone who wanted to do that. Expanding options means making it ok for women to keep their name, but also making it ok for men to say in public that they would not marry a girl who was keeping her name, IMO.
Edit: as an example of how much these norms are being relaxed, the conservative candidate for president has a magnificent dancing horse and as I can tell, no one is calling him a fag or unmasculine because of it.
Personally if I end up getting married I won't force my name on her (mostly because it's a crap name), I'd be most in favour of both of us changing our names and starting a new line.
Why is that shameful? Taking the man's name is just the solution to a coordination problem, and when women refuse to do so, it just makes life a little more confusing for everyone (especially children), and accomplishes what exactly? I would not date a feminist, because we would disagree on too many things. Is that wrong to say?
Yes, because your definition of feminist is outdated and generalized to the point of being inaccurate. Does the old farmer who likes a nice cup of tea and a mug of beer while watching baseball and reading the paper wish my partner would take my name when we get married in a couple years? Sure.
But I'm certainly not going to break up with her over it.
(Though you are already married so hopefully this isn't a decision you'll ever be faced with again!)
Ha, you beat me to it.
This was exactly the question I was going to ask: What's the difference between income groups here in these stats?
Cause I could easily see men doing worse and dropping out more if you throw all income groups into a big pile. Because low income men, afaik, are far more likely to drop out then just about anyone else.
A large part of this I would attribute to gender roles as well, not just your other points about socioeconomic status though. The socio part of that often involves a culture with very heavy imposed very traditional male roles that aren't always compatible with education.
Though I agree with the bunch of other posts about shitty gender roles for men and the stuff about school being designed for a specific personality type that is more common in girls then boys because of gender roles.
As a personal note, I really noticed the gender role thing over the last few years where I've been, at several points, a househusband. GF works, I stay at home and cook and clean. I find it amazing the number of people this makes uncomfortable.
Not saying you should! Just saying that it should be ok to express a preference for traditional gender roles just like it is now to prefer nontraditional roles. Why is it ok for a woman to insist on keeping her name, but not for a man to insist that she take his?
And don't worry, I don't think I'll be facing this problem anytime soon.
I do think your definition of feminism might be slightly off, but I daresay this is the wrong thread to open that bag of kittens.
Why is it ok for someone to choose to not do something to her name, but it is not ok for someone else to coerce them to do something to her name?
Are you fucking high?
Edit: do you not see the false equivolences between doing something to yourself, and having someone do something to theirself, or between someone choosing something for themself or someone else asking them to do the same?
@electricitylikesme, do you have a source that separates the genders by socioeconomic groups? I would be interested in seeing the data.
I mean, if this disparity exists only in the lower brackets, the disparity is still there. I then wonder why would boys suffer more than girls from poverty? Perhaps because people in poverty tend to be raised by single mothers? Are those numbers really that high? I don't know, just musing.
The choice is between preferring new, evolving norms and values vs preferring traditional values. In one case, the woman is choosing for the family to not have a single name to identify it, in the other, the man is choosing for the family to have a single name which identifies it as a family, as has been the norm in our society for time immemorial (do we know when this started?). Do you really want to say this is is purely a women's issue, and not an issue about the family as a unit?
That said, in the rural area I live, girls are still at a far larger disadvantage. This seems to be the complete opposite of any of the large metropolitan areas where they excel. I'm wonder if this has anything to do with it. And I wonder why that is, if it's the case.
Edit: in the professional world, outside of NYS I'm noticing larger amounts of women in the workforce, but where I live, I almost exclusively deal with men. I'm also wondering how pay discrepencies are working into this. Are women still making less than men in their respective fields? Are employers exploiting this to pay less for labor? I'm betting almost exclusively this has more to do with it then watching porn and playing video games (SURPRISE THIS IS POPULAR FOR GIRLS NOW TOO). Plus we need to look at the type of video games people are playing. Most girls I know play video games. The games they play? Sims, Farmville, bejeweled and games like this. Guys? Call of Duty, Diablo, and other violent styled games (both can play either but they seem to deviate this way). Strategy seems to be a bigger part of the latter set of games while busy busy seems to be part of the first set of games. Maybe there is a great number of secretarial work than skilled/focused strategy work?
I am still banking on the "I want to pay less for labor, so fuck you."
3DS: 1521-4165-5907
PS3: KayleSolo
Live: Kayle Solo
WiiU: KayleSolo
The pay discrepancy factoid myth really needs to go away. The Patriarchy hasn't issued marching orders to keep women's salaries 23% lower than men's. If they had, if that's something everyone had agreed on, you could bet your life savings that you would very rarely see a man working at a Fortune 500 company.
The whole thing is just momentum of conventional wisdom hogwash from before Human Resources replaced the Personnel Department and magic math.
Cases where discrimination against women, or anyone else for that matter, should be addressed seriously, but to believe in 2012 that employers in general lower the payscale for women solely because of their gender is beyond silly.
As there are options for shared names outside the norm of a woman accepting her husband's name, I consider your argument a false dichotomy. Relevance as a family unit issue does not detract from and is not inconsistent with relevance as a woman's / feminist issue. I will probably never say any issue worth discussing is purely a [whatever] issue.
Grr... thread is supposed to be about education. We are far afield from that topic. We need a straight up feminism thread for this.
Oh? I was under the assumption that women coworkers in the same field are paid less because of the higher level of benefits they receive (time off for pregnancy for instance). Plus they often take less financially rewarding field because of the responsibilities may interfere with that. For instance, in the medical field, more women tend to focus on the lower paying MD specialties like pediatrics, or family practice, because they're often given more leeway than a neuro or vascular surgeon (especially when there's only 2-3 surgeons in a practice).
Edit:
Feel free to give me some sources on that because I'm all for changing my views. I think it's still a coupling of "I can pay you 10% less" and possibly, men are still present in fortune500 companies because, well, it's historic to have men on the team part of the company "feel" or something. The same reason black people were told they weren't the right "fit" for the loans back in the day.
I still think this happens. My experience with higher ups at these companies has not been very favorable... I've seen jokes directed at the female workers... it's really fucking awkward.
AMFE started a thread on defining feminism, but this may be outside the topic.
The point I was trying to make before is just that I hope relaxing traditional male gender roles does not turn out the way it has for women, with all the complaints and put downs leveled at people who actually like traditional gender roles. Making it socially acceptable for boys to play with a kitchen set = good. Looking down on toys that enforce traditional gender roles like toy guns and action figures the way feminists look at the pink aisle = bad.
You basically can't fail anymore. Couple that with male competitive nature (speaking in generalities, I admit), and that eliminates the drive to "beat others", in the competitive sense. If there's no sense of competition, and everyone just gets a "participant" ribbon, regardless of how they do, then why bother?
What are you referring to?
That boys playing with barbies and kitchens are good, and we should stop producing standard gender role toys like army men.
So we buy more Legos and call it a day.
And yeah, probably need a feminism thread.
Truth.
My daughter has all of those, I think. But right now she's all about the Ninjago. *shrug*
On-topic, I can NOT find any studies about dropout rates that correlate Gender and Income into the same table. WTF is that about?
Oh yeah the feminist movement is what we should look to. I meant that most men aren't in a movement because there is still this perceived idea that feminism is for girls. Which it was when the fight was about legal and moral equality, but now it's about role equality and even more about how the idea of roles itself doesn't really work.
The whole point is that we don't need two movements, there need be only one movement for equality and it's sorta sad that we have in our culture basically told men and boys that feminism isn't for them.
Possibly no one's ever correlated or even bothered to care? (Goes against the narrative the organization is for?)
You can probably get big government bucks to research that if you know someone who's good at grant underwriting.
I think the theory goes like this: men have enjoyed an unfair advantage due to bilogically and culturally enforced talents assoicated with aggressiveness, bullying, a certain kind of non-goal-oriented competitiveness, warrior/pack mentality, dominance/submission interactions with women, etc. As the occurrence and benefits of such behaviors are neutralized, we shouldn't be surprised that it doesn't just equal the playing field, but may in fact leave men to just play FPSes and watch porn all day.
Although I don't have the data, I'd wager a heckuva lot that you can see this trend even more significantly (and over a longer history) when you look at certain subcultures. I was fascinated by the description of Hmong culture in the Clint Eastwood movie. Hmong women go to college, Hmong men go to prison.
The male gender is more or less the mutant gender. We're the ones with the Y chromosome. Males have always had the higher incidence of birth defects. We get sick easier and die earlier. We feel physical pain more and emotional pain less. We're prone to analysis over wisdom. We're stronger and more aggressive. All that jazz. The more cerebral society becomes, the more the Y chromosome becomes a handicap, not an advantage.
I also agree that in the past 10 or 20 years there has evolved a significant "preadulthood." I've seen it all around. It isn't just men, it's men and women. People seem to continue their high school / college adolescent behavior until they're solidly in their 30s. I'm not sure what direct effect that has on gender issues though. I think it just means that women are spending more time establishing a professional resume before they take their 10-year vacation.
I have an inkling that both men and women are increasingly rejecting the "get good grades, go to college, enjoy secure middle class existence" propoganda as the shell-game it's increasingly becoming. They're just reacting differently. The guys are opting out right at the start of the "get good grades" stage, because it has never been cool to be studious, and now there's not even a (perceived) solid economic argument for their being so. Who wants to bust a hump getting 'A's so that you can be the best educated barista or fry-chef or - more likely - welfare receipient? Might as well go for the one-in-a-million chance of being the next Michael Jordan or Eminem (or whoever's cool these days, damb if I know), since if you fail, you'll just be another poorly educated fry chef anyway.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?